A new Free Lossless Image Format.
http://flif.info/
Why support it in Ren'Py?
- standardized and stable now
- beats ALL other image-formats in compression (the "killer"-argument for me personally)
- supports lossy and lossless compression
- supports transparency
- supports animations
- Interlaced files can be decoded quickly at lower quality/resolution (faster load times on typical systems with slow drives but fast CPUs, should help on low-end systems with low-resolutions monitors)
- in general the support for this format is gaining traction
Good arguments for this image-format in general compared to others, but irrelevant to Ren'Py: - no generation loss
- color depth up to 16 bits per channel
viewtopic.php?f=4&t=40277&p=427878&hilit=flif#p427878
At that time of that old post the FLIF-format was considered "not final". A valid argument at that time. That is no longer the case.
Background:
I am working on a visual novel with VERY high quality 3D CG graphics. These images are rendered at 6K resolution and then downscaled to 4K and 1080p. The plan is to release a 4K- and 1080p-version of the game. There will be 1000+ images. The filesize-reduction due to the better compression would help a lot.
As far as I know these are the most efficient compressing and free formats for each media-type:
- Audio: Opus
- Video: VP9 (only HEVC beats this but it is not free, the upcoming AV1-format looks promising)
- Images: FLIF
Even though Ren'Py is mainly used with Images, a more efficient Image-compression is available for free and could be implemented.
If there would be experimental support for FLIF (basic support without transparency and animations) I'd be the first to try it.